Under the Moonlight
by Aislinn Carter
Summary: Lily Potter always thought her parents were a magical prince and princess...watching them fly under the moonlight, she realizes they are so much more.


Title: Under the Moonlight

Author: Aislinn Carter

Disclaimer: If I owned Harry Potter, I would be living in my beach house in Montauk staring at the waves and relishing life, and not worrying about my student loans. I do not live in Montauk, so...

When Lily was a little girl, her favorite thing to do was to watch her parents on their brooms. She figured out that they flew at night once they thought their children were asleep when she was four, when she couldn't sleep one night and went looking for her mother. She looked in their room, but they weren't there. She looked in James' room, then Al's, but all she found was her brothers, asleep in their beds. Scared now, she made her way downstairs, rubbing her eyes and trailing her blanket behind her.

She might not have known they were in the back if she hadn't seen a shadow swoop outside the kitchen window. She slid silently out the back door, leaving her blanket behind, and curled up on a chaise on the patio. She knew it was her parents flying just yards away from her, because her mother's hair shone fiery red in the moonlight, and that same moonlight reflected off of her father's glasses. She watched as they swooped and soared, laughing together.

Lily had always thought of her mother as a fairy princess when she was a child, and her father was the handsome prince. She had never thought that more now, as she watched them, their laughter echoing around the garden as they flew, unencumbered by children and worries and responsibilities, in the moonlight. They flew in perfect sync, so perfectly in tune with each other that seemed to be dancing in the air. Years later, Lily would remember those nights they flew together, and she would wonder that they must have looked very much like that when they were young together at Hogwarts, carefree and innocent.

But of course, she would also learn later that neither of her parents had ever had very much innocence in their lives.

Every night that summer Lily snuck out of her bed to watch her parents fly. When she was older, and she realized the passion her parents had for flying and Quidditch, she remembered these nights and realized this was the only time her parents had been able to indulge themselves, been able to take a firm hold on their gradually fading youth and just be children again.

Her mother flew like the fairy princess Lily had always taken her for, her long hair flying out behind her, swooping in circles around Lily's father. They would race each other, sometimes toss a quaffle around, sometimes even go after a snitch. Lily knew all about Quidditch even by then – how could she not, when her mother had been a professional Quidditch player and her father the youngest Seeker in a hundred years? – so she was able to follow along with what they were doing and just enjoy watching their nighttime fun.

She always went back inside before they were done, so that they didn't know she was there, but one night, she fell asleep on the chaise. She didn't wake up until she heard her parents' voices above her.

"Should we wake her up?"

Her mother laughed softly and brushed a strand of hair off her daughter's forehead. "No, just carry her in. Poor thing, she's probably overtired from watching us late every night."

Even in her sleepy state, she was still surprised to hear that they had known she was there and hadn't said anything. She felt herself being lifted by her father, and carried inside and upstairs to her room. He laid her down in her bed and tucked her in before planting a soft kiss on her forehead.

"She looks like a little angel when she's asleep," her mother whispered.

Her father chuckled. "It's when she's awake that we have to worry." He ran a hand over her head. "Our little Lily Lu."

"Reckon we should put a stop to these nighttime wanderings?"

"It's not hurting her. She just wants to see us fly."

Her parents didn't say anything about it to her the next day, so that night, she snuck out again. It was another full moon, and her parents were bathed in pale silvery light, making her mother's hair practically glow as it flew behind her yet again. During the day, her mother kept her hair tied back, but here, at night with just she and her husband flying above the sleeping world, she let it flow untied. Lily curled up on the chaise yet again, staring in awe as her mother completed a series of complicated turns and dives, after which her father clapped and laughed. "My wife, the world class Quidditch player!"

"Only with you, now."

Her father swooped in closer to her mother. "Do you miss it very much?" Lily heard him say.

"Of course I do, and so do you. But we had our time, our glory. We have much more important things to focus on now." She saw her mother's head turn in her direction just slightly, but neither she nor Lily said anything.

Her father must have noticed, because he grinned, and flew closer to the house. He hovered close to Lily and held out a hand to her. "What do you say, Lily Lu? Want to take a whirl with your old dad?"

Lily had never flown with her parents alone; her brothers were always around, making noise and driving their parents mad. Flying with the entire family was always a loud affair. The opportunity to fly with them now, in peace and quiet and moonlight, was exciting. She jumped up off the chaise and took her father's hand, and he lifted her onto the broomstick in front of him. Lilly loved flying, even though she couldn't really do it under her own power yet, and she felt the same thrill she always did as the broomstick began to lift higher to meet her mother.

Her mother smiled softly at her. "Well, Princess Lily, the sky is yours."

They flew higher, soaring together, and Lily's hair flew behind her just like her mother's, and the world grew smaller beneath her. She felt the rush that always came with flying, as they picked up speed and flew over the small lake next to their home. She felt magical, more magical than she actually was, flying with her parents under the moonlight.

It became a ritual until Lily was old enough to ride her own broom, but she still crept out some nights to watch her parents fly together. When she was older, she understood more about life and love, and she watched Harry and Ginny as they flew in perfect sync, and realized that her parents had a special relationship that some of her friends' parents didn't have. More than being husband and wife, Harry and Ginny were best friends.

It wasn't until she was even older that she learned what her parents – her entire family – had gone through once upon a time, and her parent's carefree nighttime flying took on even further significance.

And now she stood, watching them fly yet again, the night before her wedding, her last night in this house before she married Scorpius Malfoy. She expected her father needed to fly out some of his frustration, because even though she and Scorpius had been together practically since her first year, when she had befriended the shy, pale, third year Slytherin who she suspected was only in that house because his family always had been, Harry was still having a difficult time adjusting to his only daughter becoming a part of a family he still struggled not to loathe. Lily suspected her soon to be father-in-law was having a similar struggle on this night.

They were older now than they had been when she first started watching them. Her father would be fifty next year, her mother the year after that, and while they didn't look old, no longer were they the prince and princess of her childhood. Her father had gray at his temples, and his years as an Auror had left some light scars on his arms and one on his cheek. He had some lines near his eyes, but he was still fit and energetic, and he still had a full head of hair, which he was proud of to no end, especially since Scorpius' father was now completely bald. Her mother, even at forty-eight, was still full of the same fiery energy her father had always loved, and she still swooped around Harry in complicated circles and dives, even decades after she had retired from Quidditch to have children. Her hair was still long, and instead of grey, gold strands had cropped up in her hair. "Redheads don't go grey, they go gold," she'd said smugly to Harry when the first strands showed up. Her face was still smooth aside from a few lines around her eyes, same as Harry, and she kept herself fit and slim. When Lily had asked once why Ginny was so fit and Grandmum was a bit of a round woman, Ginny said that Grandmum hadn't had a career to keep her busy and out of the house the way she had, and had given birth to more children anyway. "And Grandmum used to eat a lot of chocolates when the lot of us went off to Hogwarts," Ginny had told her once with a smile. "I keep myself busy so I make sure I don't drown my empty nest syndrome in sweets."

Lily stood at the back door, a light blanket wrapped around her shoulders and a cup of tea in her hands. It was a cool night, even for early June, and she could see frost on the grass twinkling in the moonlight. She watched her parents fly with a full heart, knowing now, as an adult, things she hadn't known as a four year old girl. Back then, she'd just seen her parents as magical fairies, like the ones in the books Aunt Hermione had read to them (where the fairies were much nicer than real ones). Now, watching them, knowing the love of her other half and what a lifetime together would mean, she saw much more than fairies. She saw soul mates. She heard her mother's twinkling laugh as her father teased her, still after all these years, the best of friends. She knew that her mother hadn't started out as her father's best friend. That had come later, after years of crushes, other significant others, deaths, battles, and tears. She knew that her uncle and aunt had been her father's best friends first, and that the three of them had been inseparable until the end of the second war, when her parents had re-connected and fallen even more deeply in love. Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione were still her father's best friends. But now they were her mother's as well, and even that friendship, that early bond that had endured since their first year, paled next to the bond Harry and Ginny shared.

Lily took a sip of her tea. She wouldn't join them, not tonight. Though she longed to climb on her broom and fly without care with her parents, to be their little girl for one more night, she knew they needed this night for each other. Her brothers were both already married and out of the house, James already with a son and Al with a baby on the way, and Lily knew that this last wedding was particularly wrenching for her parents. She was their last child, their only daughter, and she was marrying the son of a family that had caused her own no end of pain once upon a time. They needed this time, without her.

They circled each other, both in that same dance that had captivated her as a child, and she knew that up there, they weren't Weasley, #4, of the Hollyhead Harpies, or Auror Potter, head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, or Ginevra Potter, Quidditch correspondent…or most especially, the Boy Who Lived. They still called him that, sometimes, and it was still disconcerting to know that much of the wizarding world still worshipped her father.

But out here, now, they were none of those people. Lily had finally figured that out, why her parents flew every night. It wasn't so that they could take a break from work, or the kids, or to get an adrenaline rush from flying. It was so, for a few moments, they could just be Harry and Ginny.

Lily remembered when she first found out about her parents and the role they had played in the downfall of You-Know-Who…or as her father insisted on calling him when everyone else was still afraid to, Voldemort. The family had been very careful about shielding the children from the truth, letting them only know that they had all played a large role in the war, and Lily suspected they'd only let them know that much because of the way their community treated them. But as she grew, and more and more of her cousins and finally her brothers went off to Hogwarts and learned the truth, Lily herself heard snippets of the complete picture her parents were so reluctant to let her see, and finally confronted them when she was nine years old, during Al's first holiday break at Hogwarts. They told her the truth, the whole truth, leaving nothing out since she would be learning it from her history books in a year anyway, and Lily's view of her parents as a magical prince and princess were altered somewhat. Now, she saw them – and her entire family – as heroes. It was a light they tried to dissuade everyone from seeing them in, but Lily knew the price her parents had paid…she knew that her own mother had lost her innocence forever and been damaged beyond repair at just eleven years old, and she knew her father had been damaged long before that. To her, for all their sacrifices, for all their pain, and for the fact that despite all that they had given her brothers and her the happiest childhood they could have had, they would always be heroes. But she knew more than anything else, they just wanted to be Harry and Ginny.

She watched them, bathed in the moonlight, and she hoped so much that she and Scorpius could have this. They didn't yet, how could they? They didn't have the history her parents had. But one day they would, and once day she and her husband would be awaiting the wedding of their own children, and they would fly high under the moonlight as her parents were, to a place where they could forget the world and tomorrow and be who they had been, once upon a time.


End file.
